Descent into Softer Emotions
by angelmaple
Summary: An exploration on just how much did Sherlock care, or, not care.


Author's Note: First drabble. Non-beta'd, non-Britpicked. Written late at night while procrastinating. Please criticise and pull it apart if anyone cares to.

Contrary to popular belief, Sherlock Holmes was not a man oblivious to the accepted norms of social behaviour. How others can believe him to be oblivious to anything was just a testimony to Sherlock's opinion that most human beings believed what they wanted to believe, regardless of whether their conclusions fitted all the data available. Granted, most people don't even see, much less observe, all data presented to them, but anyone who has spent two minutes in his company would be a fool if they believed that he, Sherlock Holmes, could ever be oblivious to anything. It just so happens that to Sherlock, most people _were_ fools.

John Watson, however, was most decided not a fool.

While others scoffed at Sherlock's lack of emotion at a crime scene or the morgue (he would never understand why he was supposed to waste energy to express the meager, false sympathies from a stranger that would have meant absolutely nothing to the deceased, instead of putting every ounce of his energy into deducing and catching the murder), called him nasty names (nothing new there, been enduring those all his life) and relished with glee over his heartlessness and hatefulness, or shook their heads resignedly at him as if he was a personal disappointment, John Watson pointed out his social faux pas objectively, firmly, yet gently.

Sherlock never appeared moved by any of it; at most he exerted himself for a soft query for John or a cold explanation to others. But he knew, by this, and many other things, that John put unerring trust in him while others (save perhaps Lestrade) gave him up as a lost cause, a lunatic. A genius lunatic, but still a lunatic. And to them, that makes him sub-human.

So he gave them something to be spiteful towards, something concrete. The label 'sociopath', with or without the 'high-functioning' tag attached to it, was a step away from 'psychopath' in most people's ignorant minds. So they turn ever more against him, and Sherlock had more reasons to make less effort to be 'normal' and a right to be even more condescending, as truly, most people _were_ fools.

The word seemingly had no effect on John. He did complain and argue with Sherlock – the goals of both were always lost causes – but there was nothing even bordering on maliciousness about him, not even in his most furious moments. In fact, in his most furious moments, Sherlock saw a certain tenacity in John when it came to himself.

When John was furious with Sherlock over his lack of compassion for the elderly blind lady held hostage by Moriarty because Sherlock had left her strapped by bombs for hours, Sherlock was almost convinced by his own assertion to John and his own coolness that the time made no material difference. Perhaps he really believed himself then. But reflecting back, if, _if_ he had contacted Moriarty earlier, would she still tried to describe him? Would she have been less distressed and listened to Sherlock when he told her to stop speaking? He tried to tell her, he really did. No, it would not do to dwell on these thoughts. But Sherlock remembered the disappointment that fueled the anger and frustration in John's eyes as he shouted at him, and he felt something… twist, in his stomach. He didn't care to identify it.

That feeling exponentially increased, then somewhat abated, when, clutching the phone numbly in his hand after the explosion of the bomb left a ghastly desolate ringing in his ears, he felt John's hand on his back briefly, a comforting touch amidst the numbness. If he had a heart, it was certainly eased to know that John was there, and John didn't judge him. John didn't write him off as the hopeless freak. John expected him to act like a normal human being. John recognized it when Sherlock was suffering, even if Sherlock didn't know it himself.

Sherlock never had the desire to please others, because all they have done, all his life, was to marginalize him, till he stopped caring and acted according to his own logic. But the truth was, Sherlock admitted to himself: he did of course know the norms of social behaviour and emotional expression; he had more or less lost the faculties for adhesion to such norms. However, Sherlock felt that he could begin to search for them and relearn so long lost a skill with John beside him. He could at least practice them for John's sake, for it bothered him more than he cared to admit when John was disappointed in him. But mind, only in John's company. In their private realm. He would not expose himself to _anybody else_, perish the thought. Just John. For John.


End file.
